From the course: Photo Gear Weekly

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Understanding exposure compensation

Understanding exposure compensation

From the course: Photo Gear Weekly

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Understanding exposure compensation

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- Many photographers struggle with exposure in general and exposure compensation in particular. I think the key is to understand why we even need exposure compensation. When we're shooting in an automatic or semiautomatic exposure mode, the camera's meter is determining the overall light levels for the scene and the camera's trying to find good exposure settings in the camera for us. The problem, the real issue, the reason we need exposure compensation in the first place, is that sometimes the camera's meter is fooled a little bit. I have an example here. I've framed up a shot of this building set amongst the trees here in New York City, and the problem is that the sky and the building are relatively bright, but the trees that are framing up that scene are relatively dark, and there's enough of those trees in the frame to trick the camera a little bit. It's seeing a lot of dark areas. It's trying to brighten things up. And so I'm ending up with some blown-out highlight details in the…

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